Artist award ceremony held during Imagine RIT festival on May 3

Rochester Artech 2008 Digital Art Exhibition, featuring winning digital media submissions from high school and college students, and amateur and professional artists from the Greater Rochester area will be showcased at Dyer Arts Center, located at Rochester Institute of Technology’s National Technical Institute for the Deaf, from April 11 through May 4. Several grand prizes will be awarded, ranging from $500 to $1,000.

“We hope to promote the expression of the arts through digital media and to increase Rochester’s recognition as a center for digital imaging,” says Dean Ganskop, a second-year IT graduate student at RIT who founded the exhibition three years ago.

Artech 2008 reception and award ceremony will be held in conjunction with the debut of Imagine RIT: Innovation and Creativity Festival on Saturday, May 3. Keynote speaker Professor Jason Ohler, University of Alaska at Juneau, will deliver an address at 2:30 p.m., followed by a brief reception, with the award ceremony scheduled for 4 p.m.

“Ohler, the author of ‘Digital Storytelling in the Classroom,’ will deliver a virtual, interactive presentation about the necessity for art to become a fourth literacy,” Ganskop says.

“In an era in which students design Web sites for homework assignments and integrate video, graphics, music and animation into school projects, art is fast becoming the new literacy for our times,” Ganskop explains. “The three Rs are now the 4 Rs: reading, ‘riting, ‘rithmetic and art.”

The juried show will feature more than 70 pieces in graphic design, illustration, photography, printmaking and collage/montage categories. NTID’s Sculpture Gallery, located within Dyer Arts Center, will also feature a variety of videos, animations and interactive exhibits.

NTID Dyer Arts Center, located on the RIT campus in the Lyndon Baines Johnson Building, is open from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 9 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Friday, 1 to 3:30 p.m. Saturday. For gallery information, call (585) 475-6855 or email rkb6548@rit.edu.

Editor’s Note: Rochester Artech 2008 Digital Art Exhibition is sponsored by RIT’s Creative Arts Committee, the Rochester Arts and Cultural Council, NYS Council for the Arts, and the Print Club of Rochester.